Week 9 - Portfolio Building

This week I decided to forgo the assigned topic, which was "Air," and shoot for my portfolio. I've got a few ideas for some marketing materials, so I wanted to shoot some fruit and vegetable images that would support that effort. A few weeks back during the Roots of Power assignment, I shot a flying kohlrabi, and it's made me think I wanted to shoot a series of similar fruit and vegetable "portraits."

I started with a pomegranate. I don't think I've ever eaten a pomegranate, to be honest. And trust me, it is difficult to find a nice looking pomegranate...just ask the shoppers at Stop & Shop who watched me pick over the pomegranates for 20 minutes. My original concept for these images would be complementary colors, i.e., purple fruit on a yellow background, orange fruit on a blue background, etc. But as I played around with some of the combinations, I realized it wasn't exactly hitting the mark. Here are a couple attempts at flying pomegranates:

As you may (or may not) be able to tell, I had a strobe shooting through a scrim on both the right and left side of the fruit, and a spot light on the background. I also had a large white reflector in front and below the fruit.

I also worked with a vine ripened tomato. Since it was reddish orange, the complementary colors would be somewhere between green and blue. While I liked it with the green background, I preferred the blue background. Your thoughts?

Next week is a free shoot - we can pick our own topic. My plan is to shoot more "flying food." If you'd like to follow along with my 52 week progress and my other musings, please add your email address in the box on the right and click "subscribe."